Still
by lunchinanelevator
Summary: Before he goes, Nick follows through on his threat. Alternate ending to 4.10 and on beyond …
1. Chapter 1

The office is stiller than still. Kalinda has disabled all the cameras, but the city reflections fragmented in the dark glass still make her feel like she's being watched. Her breath is even but shallow, and when the elevator dings its arrival the sound seems to tunnel up from the floor and through her body to reach her ears, muffling Nick's footsteps on the carpet. She doesn't turn, but she can feel him watching her.

"That was a bit much," he says finally.

Kalinda isn't looking at him. "I let you off easy."

"You broke a few of Bill's ribs."

"I'm not surprised."

"What do you want?"

Kalinda's ready for this. She explains that she's called the police, that they're probably swarming the impound lot as they speak. She unfolds her map, explains the storage locker in Detroit full of dusty cash, how easy it will be, before they really start looking, for him to cross the border. He stares at her for a while, his eyes glassy and hard.

Looking at him now, she can't believe she's let it go on this long. He was Leela's lover, Leela's husband, a world she can't believe she belonged to, can't believe she ever fit.

"Thorough," Nick says finally.

Kalinda nods.

"Shouldn't be surprised. You always were." He takes the locker key, folds the envelope into his jacket pocket, his eyes still locked to hers.

"When did you take care of all this?" he asks. "Didn't you have to work today?"

"Took the afternoon off."

"Well, that explains it," he says. "Funny, though. I thought they would've called you."

She looks at him, masking her uncertainty. "No need."

"Yeah, probably not." He shrugs insouciantly. "But she's your friend, isn't she?"

"Who?"

"My lawyer. My former lawyer. You knew she dropped me as a client, yeah?"

"Nick." She can hear herself breathing. "What are you talking about?"

"You think I'm an idiot." He takes a few steps towards her, and when she doesn't move—it's taking all her self-control not to—enters her space, puts his hands on her shoulders. "You thought that since I got here. I'm not an idiot." Her throat is dry. He brings his lips down to her ear and kisses it, slow and thorough in a way that makes her shudder, before he says, "She'll be in hospital now, I suppose. Or … something."

Kalinda's jammed her elbow into his gut before she knows she did it. He doubles over, gripping the edge of the conference table with his left hand, so when she stands she towers over him. Thirty seconds ago that might have made a difference to her. "Tell me you didn't." Kalinda's pulse feels like bullets.

"I knew it." He smiles, though his breath is still ragged with the pain. "You're such a slut, Kalinda." In his mouth her name sounds like a joke, like the name itself is the insult. "Stayed busy while I was gone. Every time I think I take care of one, there's another. But really, it's her you're talking to all the time, isn't it?" He nods, a sharp little jerk of his sharp chin. "I thought it was that federal agent first. I thought it was Cary. But when I got it—I don't see how I could have missed it."

"Nick." She barely manages the word.

"And I don't think much of your taste. I mean, I guess she's pretty enough, but icy. Icy bitch."

"Shut up."

"She didn't deserve you."

He's collected himself enough to stand up again, but he's still to weak to block when Kalinda punches his throat, groin, and gut in short order. He collapses, grunting in pain.

_Didn't. Didn't. She didn't._ He didn't. He can't have. He can't.

"Tell me where she is," Kalinda says, feeling tears choke in on her voice. She puts her heel on his wrist, bears down until she hears something crack.

But Nick still looks up at her and says, "I don't know where she is."

/

Will's the only one there when Kalinda arrives, twisting his hands in the waiting room outside the ICU. When she finally checked her voice mail, realizing as she squealed out of the parking structure that she'd had her phone off since Michigan that afternoon, it was Will's voice, low and ragged as rocks in a tumbler, telling her which hospital, then the floor number a couple of hours later.

He looks up just enough to register she's there, then stares again at the wall behind her hip. "Peter's there. Her kids." He jerks his head towards the double doors, blank-faced and unapologetic. "Diane was here for a little while. Told her I'd call. Eli was here, but he's managing the crisis."

Kalinda nods. "How …" She can't finish the sentence, and taking another step seems out of the question.

"She lost a lot of blood." Will's still talking to the wall, which is fine with Kalinda; he's just another person whose pain she's caused, she doesn't have to see it. "A lot. When they brought her in—" He stops talking for a second or two. That's all right with Kalinda, too. "I don't know much, just what I'm hearing out here. They haven't had a chance—and, you know, it's me. They only talk to family. He might talk to you. Peter, I mean."

"Where—where was she?"

"Parking garage. Not ours, though. The one across the street."

"Why was she there?"

"We don't know yet," says Will. "Her car's still in ours, they checked."

Black spots start to swim in front of Kalinda's eyes, and her vision tunnels. She backs up against the wall, grips the paisley upholstery of the waiting-room chair so hard she thinks she might break it, or more likely her fingers. The breaths she takes are hollow and harsh and taste of sulfur and bile.

Will glances up. "You all right?" he says, not bothering to pretend he's really interested.

Kalinda doesn't answer.

/

It's Zach Florrick who finally finds them a few hours later. They've sat in silence broken only by the occasional cadre of nurses rushing by with a patient on a bed; when the nausea got too powerful to bear, Kalinda made it to the bathroom across the hall before she started to dry-heave, then reentered the icy dome of silence when she was sure she was done. They don't notice Zach until he speaks, and then his voice shatters the air that has been freezing them and protecting them.

"My mom's stable."

Their heads snap up at the same time, but Will's the one who finds his voice first. "What?"

"My mom's stable. That's what they said. They—they got the bullets out." He swallows, and his voice shakes, and he looks and sounds like Alicia, and the bullets echo inside Kalinda's temples. "Or, I mean, one of them just went out already. Like, it passed in and out. But they got the other one. She's—they said she's going to be all right. They're moving her to a different room tomorrow."

Will stands, suddenly, all one fluid motion, his relief a tidal wave. He embraces Zach, who stands with his face blank and puzzled and overwhelmed, meeting Kalinda's eyes for the split second that Kalinda's able to bear it.

"Thank God," Will breathes, letting the boy go.

"We knew you were here, so I thought …" Zach doesn't know how to finish that sentence. "You can't go in the room, but do you want to see her?"

"It's okay with your dad?" Will asks.

"It's okay with my dad."

Will hovers for a split second, then follows Zach towards the double doors. Both of them turn to look at her. "K?" Will says.

Kalinda shakes her head.

"Come on, Kalinda," says Zach. "She's all right." The dazed expression has begun to pass from his face, as though telling them made Alicia's rescue real. "It'll be good for her to see you."

He's wrong, of course. It would be better if Alicia didn't see her now, if Alicia never had to see her again. It would have been better if Alicia'd continued to hate her, never been forthcoming, never tried to make it work.

But oh, Kalinda needs it, needs a new picture of Alicia to replace the horrors that have been flashing across her retinas each time she blinks. Alicia is breathing, stable, a few hundred feet away from her.

And unconscious. Surely Kalinda's presence won't hurt.

Kalinda forces herself from the stiffly carpeted chair, follows a few paces behind Will. She hears the suck of air as the doors swing shut behind her.


	2. Chapter 2

"Kalinda. Kalinda, wake up."

Kalinda breaks from a shallow, tumbling sleep to feel Grace Florrick's hand shaking her elbow, the ends of the girl's reddish hair brushing Kalinda's jacket.

"Wake up."

Kalinda tries to assess from the movement in the corridor what time it is. She's spent the last three days at the hospital, and thus recognizes that it's the night-shift nurses who are bustling by, that the orderlies have parked their dinner carts and moved on to other floors.

"Come on, Kalinda. My mom's awake."

The adrenaline shoots through Kalinda before she's consciously processed the words, and she's on a well-trod path down the corridor, Grace trotting at her heels. Alicia's nurses have recommended only two visitors at a time, so when afternoon rolls around Kalinda's been happy to cede her seat to the Florrick children, to wait in the lounge or in the chairs near the front desk, where the receptionist is clearly unnerved by her stares. Often that's when she falls asleep. When Peter finally takes Zach and Grace back up to Highland Park she's stayed, listening all night to the barrage of machines that monitor Alicia, the beeping and hissing and exhaling that mean she's still there. Still there. She knows every one of the night nurses by sight, though she has yet to ask their names.

But Alicia's been unconscious, first from the surgeries and then the morphine. She's risen out of it for a moment or two, but it's been a blurred, murmuring sort of awake, her crisp speech submerged, ghostly pale face and messy hair and nasal cannula and IVs completing the picture. Seeing Alicia wake up like that has scared Kalinda so much that she's gently encouraged Alicia's thumb to the morphine button every time. Kalinda stops by the door of Alicia's room, one hand on the wall.

"She was asking for you," Grace says. "Come on, come in."

Zach's by the bed, hunched over his mother's hand, and he smiles at them over his shoulder. "Dad's coming," he says to Grace. "Look, Mom, Kalinda's here."

Kalinda can't move. Alicia's face is still chalky, barely distinguished in hue from her hospital gown or the dressing on her shoulder. Her fingers move slowly over Zach's. The cannula is gone, for which Kalinda is grateful—it feels like she's looking at the whole of Alicia's face for the first time in much too long. Someone, probably Grace, has smoothed her hair back. Her lips look dry, so cracked that when she offers a little smile Kalinda fears it might hurt her.

"You're alive," Alicia says, and her voice sounds rusty and choked.

Kalinda's startled. "No, you are," she says. It is absolutely the only thing she can think of to say. She sways a little on her feet, and the limited range of expression on Alicia's face expands to include alarm or something like it.

"Sit down," she says. "Grace, honey, get a chair for her."

At the authority in Alicia's tone, so familiar even with her voice so thin, Kalinda really does smile. Zach has already shifted from his chair to Alicia's bed, and Grace guides Kalinda over. She doesn't want to cry, not in front of Alicia and certainly not in front of her kids, so she looks at Alicia's pale hand, the one without the IV, and doesn't say anything.

By hovering near Tony Burton's elbow as he fruitlessly questions the Florricks, and by being around Alicia's nurses so much that she's basically wallpaper, Kalinda has ascertained some of the details of the case. Both bullets hit the left side of Alicia's body, one passing through her shoulder, the other lodging into her spleen. The sole witness had heard the shots from a nearby stairwell, but the assailant was gone by the time he saw Alicia, who most likely would have bled out were it not for his immediate action. When the paramedics arrived the witness, a total stranger without a trace of gunshot residue on his hands, was leaning bare-backed over Alicia, upper body in push-up position, pressing his own jacket and shirt over each wound. (Kalinda hasn't even dared to contemplate her debt to him.) As the ambulance pulled out he noticed Alicia's cellphone had slipped from her pocket, grabbed it as the crime scene techs were arriving, and called the most recently dialed number, Will's. Will had contacted Peter as he rushed from the office.

No one saw the shooter, and Alicia's savior hadn't even heard a voice; to search for DNA or prints in a public parking structure was next to useless. So the case has been stalled until Alicia's fully conscious, which has agitated Peter to no end. He thinks it might have something to do with him, with the Kresteva or Hayward campaigns, a proposition so outlandish it shocked even Eli.

But desperate to support the candidate (and once they learned Alicia was out of the woods Kalinda could tell he was pleased, very much in spite of himself, that this tragedy would forestall his corruption investigation), Eli asked Kalinda to look into it. She had just shaken her head, still numb, and offered Eli a phone number for Sophia Russo. He wouldn't call, she knew, and even if he did it would take Sophia long enough to put it all together that Kalinda could tie up the loose ends. But she couldn't leave the trauma ward, couldn't even plan on it.

"Are you all right?" Alicia breathes, her gaze sliding over Kalinda, and Kalinda can't believe she's even asking.

"Yeah. You?" For now, all her sentences will have to contain one word or less.

"I'm okay."

She's not, though. Kalinda can _see_ her swallowing the pain. She nods towards the morphine button. "Need that?"

"Not yet. I want to see you all. I want to … pay attention." Grace has come to perch on the hospital bed as well, opposite Zach on the other side of her mother's legs. Each of them rests a hand gently on one of Alicia's ankles beneath the covers, as if to prevent her from floating away. "How was school?" Alicia asks her children.

"Fine."

"Fine."

"Fascinating," says Alicia, and Grace giggles. Kalinda thinks she knows what they mean, that their school days, insofar as they've had them, must have consisted only of waiting to see Alicia. There's a reason she hasn't gone to work. "Kalinda, was there a verdict in the … the Merrithew case?"

"I don't know."

"Kalinda's been here all the time, Mom," Zach says.

"Really," Grace adds. "_All the time_."

Kalinda nods, her throat tight. Alicia studies her.

"Dad's glad you're awake, Mom," Grace says. "He said he'd be here in …" She looks at her brother, who checks his cellphone.

"Like, five minutes," he says. Grace's lip is trembling, Kalinda notices, but she just holds her mother's ankle a little tighter.

For the last three days Peter and Kalinda have jointly kept a cordial, if silent, vigil. Both felt responsible, though Kalinda lacked the fortitude or the voice to tell Peter this wasn't his fault, there was no way it was his fault; each acknowledged, implicitly, the depth of the other's need to be present. It's been oddly comforting to have someone else in the room for the long, empty mornings. (Will's been delegating Alicia's cases at work, has only stopped by for the odd hour when Kalinda remembers to text him that Peter has left.)

But sharing a watch with Peter Florrick is one thing, sharing an even moderately alert Alicia with him quite another. Attention to Alicia's physical pain takes all Kalinda has, and she doesn't think she can handle any more. She rises from the chair a little too quickly. "I'm getting lunch," she says. "Grace, you, um, want anything? Zach?"

Both of them look surprised. "No thanks, we're okay," Zach says quickly, and Grace nods her assent.

"I'd ask you, Alicia, but …" Kalinda has to stop starting sentences she can't finish.

Alicia's trying to hide surprise, though it's hard to hide anything on her haggard, naked face. "Thanks, Kalinda." She shakes her left hand with its IV a tiny bit, though it looks like it hurts. "I have a few more bags of this coming. Go eat something real."

This kind of social grace from a gunshot victim means Kalinda needs to leave the room, fast. She nods to all three Florricks, already absorbed in each other's company, the children's relief already filling Kalinda's chair.

She rounds two corners before she has to stop and bend over, covering her mouth to block breaths like sobs. A distracted, overweight white nurse, just a trace too busy for her shift, pats Kalinda absently on the shoulder and keeps walking by.

Kalinda stares after her, then straightens up, slips her phone out of her pocket. Probably she ought to call Will.

/

Sometime after midnight, Kalinda wakes with a jolt in the lounge. Automatically she glides down the hall to Alicia's room (private, thanks to Peter). She slips through the door and stares at Alicia.

Alicia's face is raw and white beneath the dimmed fluorescents. Both arms, the bare and the bandaged and intubated, lie palm down above her whitish blanket, one short sleeve of her hospital gown rippling in the gust from an air vent and the other crumpled over her bandaged shoulder. She stirs a little in thin, drugged sleep, favoring her right side.

She's going to be all right. Kalinda would have gone crazy if she hadn't known for sure, and if she hadn't gotten to see for herself she never would have believed it. But now she knows. Barring hospital infection (and Kalinda's watched the medical team closely enough to feel reassured about their caution), Alicia has a rough couple of weeks of recovery, then months of physical therapy and adjustment ahead of her, but she'll return to her children fundamentally the mother she was, won't leave Lockhart/Gardner shorthanded. Won't leave the next governor of Illinois a widower, nor even a tragic martyr to a grievously disabled spouse.

That was what Kalinda needed to know. Now she'll do what she should have done months ago, the second the words "F & E Construction" fell from Alicia's lips.

Alicia's lips. For just another second Kalinda watches them, moving gently with her exhalations. They're not as dry now; the nursing staff has been attentive since Kalinda alerted them to the problem this afternoon. She steps forward, brushes her hand against Alicia's, and then heads back to the door.

"You leaving?" Alicia murmurs.

Kalinda freezes. "Yeah."

"Yeah, you should rest." Alicia's voice is like water. "Come back tomorrow?"

Kalinda doesn't know what to say. She turns back toward Alicia slowly. "No."

There's silence, and then Alicia gets it. Her eyes open fully, and Kalinda can tell she would sit up if she could. Kalinda watches helplessly as Alicia fumbles for the button that raises the back of her bed. "Leaving leaving?" Alicia finally says when she's as close to upright as she can manage. And even that's a strain; Kalinda can see the pain in her face.

Kalinda nods, one jerk of her head.

"Why?"

"I didn't kill him." The words are out in a rush before Kalinda knew she was thinking them.

"You killed someone?" Alicia sounds measured, the way she's always reacted when Kalinda reveals shocking news.

"No, I didn't."

"I don't understand." Alicia's brow creases like it does when she's in pain, and it's all Kalinda can do not to run her hand across Alicia's forehead to soothe it. "You're running away because you _didn't_ kill someone?"

"I couldn't, Alicia."

Alicia looks at her, and the least Kalinda can do is meet her expectations, so she goes on. She's talking slowly, each word an egg in her throat. "Not and get to you. There wasn't time and I couldn't—think. I just wanted to know you were … I—I think he went. I think he'll stay gone. But if he didn't, or he doesn't … then I shouldn't be where you are."

Alicia looks at Kalinda for long enough that Kalinda thinks she's fallen asleep again.

"Do you have to go tonight?" she finally asks.

Kalinda doesn't know how to answer that.

"Can you stay? Just until the kids come?"

The Florrick kids have the day off tomorrow, one of those imaginary holidays that only fancy private schools seem to celebrate. This afternoon when Peter wanted a few moments alone with Alicia, they were eagerly detailing to Kalinda their plans for a day with their mother. The efforts both Zach and Grace were putting into sounding normal took Kalinda's breath away.

"Please, Kalinda?" Alicia's rough, reedy voice splinters, and she sounds like what she is, someone who realizes that the pain is just beginning. "I don't want to be alone tonight."

If there ever was a time Kalinda could have said no to Alicia, it certainly isn't now. Without assenting—she's not sure that she can speak—she slides into the chair by Alicia's right hand, her usual seat. Alicia pushes her morphine button, then reaches out for Kalinda's hand, a gesture that seems to take a lot of effort, and without hesitation Kalinda takes it. She runs her thumb over Alicia's knuckles, back and forth slowly and gently, until Alicia's eyelids fall and there's nothing but the monitor and her breath and the air vents and the glint of the IV stand in the dark and the nurses, taking silent vitals in the dark, and a smog-smeared sky outside the window that lightens to pearly gray as dawn approaches.


	3. Chapter 3

When Kalinda opens her eyes Cary's peering around the door. She's surprised by how glad she is to see him, wings opening inside her chest. Although she texts updates to Will on a regular basis, she's starting to forget there is a world outside these walls.

Alicia's still asleep, her hand still in Kalinda's. Cary cocks an eyebrow at that. (There's still the barest trace of a bruise around his right eye; Kalinda never asked him, and he never talked about it, but now she wonders. _I thought it was Cary._) He pulls the other chair gently from its spot against the wall and slides it up to Alicia's left side, by her foot so that he avoids her bandaged wounds and the IV line.

"Sorry I'm so early," Cary whispers, smiling at Kalinda. "But I'm grabbing almost all of her cases, so this is all the time I have."

"It's not visiting hours," says Kalinda.

"That's right, it isn't," Cary says. "I had to charm the girl at the front desk."

"And I'm sure you did it well."

"Oh, did I." The cocky smile doesn't look natural on him, not the way it used to. Kalinda almost laughs. "How's our girl doing? Will said she's better."

"Yeah." It would be impossible for Kalinda to summarize the last few days, Alicia's experience or her own. "She's in a lot of pain, though. Now that she's awake for it."

Cary grimaces. "They … took out an organ or something, right?"

"Yeah. Her spleen. Ruptured." Kalinda doesn't like to dwell on it.

"You don't really need one of those, right?"

"You can get by."

Both of them turn their heads sharply as Alicia's eyes flutter open. She's clearly woken up hurting, but she tries to hide it as soon as she notices Cary. "Hi," she says to him. "Thanks for coming."

"Thanks for your hospitality." Cary shrugs. "I was worried I wouldn't get to talk to you. Glad you're up. How are you feeling?"

"I've been better." Alicia raises an eyebrow.

"I know." Cary rubs her foot with casual affection. "You need anything? Another pillow?"

"That'd be great. Thank you."

Cary seems familiar with hospitals—he finds the pillow easily in the cabinet opposite Alicia's bed. (It also holds Alicia's laptop and some clothes that Zach and Grace brought from home, still useless for the moment.) He tucks it under Alicia's right arm, at her request, and brings the blanket up, much more gently towards her left side. "Wow," he says, looking at the dressings over Alicia's wounds. "They really got you, didn't they?"

"They did."

Cary studies Alicia for a second, like he's looking for something, then resumes the same conversational tone. "Can you eat yet?"

"Clear liquids, starting tomorrow."

"Congratulations! What are you going to drink first? White wine doesn't count."

Cary excels at caretaking, Kalinda thinks as she watches him. He strikes a masterful balance of tender, casual, and careful. He banters with the nurse who comes to take Alicia's vitals for the morning—Josie, it turns out, is her name—and does a spot-on and hilarious impression of David Lee extending his sympathies. Extra bedding, cool washcloths across the forehead, joking about injury and treatment—these things would never cross Kalinda's mind. For a second she's furious at Cary, but it's hard to hold onto that fury when Alicia looks so beautifully relaxed. Maybe "Alicia before" and "Alicia after" won't always be so firmly divided in Kalinda's memory.

"I'll swing by tomorrow," Cary says. "Can I bring you anything from work? Like … case files? Office supplies?"

Alicia laughs. "No, thanks—"

Peter bursts into the room. "Alicia, the police are here. Oh, hey, Cary. Kalinda." He says her name as fast as he can.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Alicia," says Cary. "Kalinda, call me if anything changes, okay? Peter, it's good to see you." He rises and exits, tailored and graceful.

Peter doesn't miss a beat. "I told Chief Rogers you were awake yesterday, Alicia, and they need your statement so we can find this guy. Do you think you're up for it?"

"Yes, I think so," Alicia says slowly. She's looking at Kalinda. Kalinda's not sure why.

"I know it's a lot, Alicia. But we want to get him. The longer he has without anyone on his tail, the less we can do." Peter is blustery in his fear, honestly a bit annoying. Kalinda hadn't realized she had never seen him scared before.

"I know that, Peter," Alicia says. "They're here already? The police?"

"They came with me."

"Where are the kids?"

"They're here too. They understand. They can wait."

Alicia's eyelids look heavy, her brow creased. She doesn't talk for a second or two. Then she says, "I just need a few minutes, Peter, all right? Can the police wait?"

"Of course—of course." He stares at her.

"Go entertain them," Alicia says. Her words still sound slow and slick with painkillers, though Kalinda wonders if she isn't putting it on a little. "I'll send Kalinda out when I'm ready."

Peter nods to the area above Kalinda's head, then turns abruptly.

Alicia scrutinizes Kalinda, who already feels exposed. She takes in Kalinda's rumpled skirt and jacket, the boots still on her aching feet, the hanks of hair that have worked their way out of her updo. Then she says slowly, "Is there anything I shouldn't say?"

"What?"

"To the police, Kalinda. Is there anything I shouldn't say?"

Kalinda throws her gaze sideways, counting the squares on the linoleum floor. Someone came in to mop it around three in the morning, a Latino guy who couldn't have been more than nineteen, his sleeves rolled up and his hair a cluster of glorious curls. "Say what happened, Alicia."

"Could that hurt you?"

"Probably not." Not any more than this, than the days and nights of seeing what she's done to Alicia. If she could bear to leave the trauma ward Kalinda thinks she might welcome the hurt Nick would bring.

"But maybe?"

"Tell them what happened."

"I don't want to. Not if it's dangerous."

Through the door's tall, narrow window Kalinda sees Tony Burton and his new partner, Karen Migdalia, shifting impatiently in the hall, looking at an equally uncomfortable Zach and Grace. She rises, but Alicia grips her wrist with a strength Kalinda thought had bled from her, left its stain on a cold cement ramp.

"He told me you were there."

"What?"

"When he called me. He said he had you with him."

Kalinda swallows. "He didn't."

"I know. But that's why I was there. That's why I went," says Alicia. Her eyes look a little over-drugged, a little crazy. "He said he'd kill you if I didn't come and—should I tell them that? Is it important?"

"I don't _know_, Alicia!" Kalinda says, suddenly panicked. She realizes how badly she needs to leave this hospital, the feeling crawling over her body like driver ants. No one but a patient has it worse. "If you don't know what to say, you should have asked a lawyer. You can still ask a lawyer. I'll call the office if you want. The cops will have to wait."

Alicia blinks a few times, slowly, as if even that takes more energy than she has. "Yeah, I think I do."

"I'll call Diane." Diane, fighting violence against women for her long and storied career, will do more for Alicia than Kalinda ever could. "And I know Tony. I'll get them to wait."

Alicia looks confused. "Thank you."

Kalinda can't say "you're welcome," not to Alicia. She slides her wrist from the other woman's grip—not so firm anymore, hardly holding on at all—and slips into the corridor, letting the door click shut behind her.


	4. Chapter 4

At home for the first time in almost a week, Kalinda refills the olive canvas duffel bag that she emptied months ago, when she thought that simply staying in Chicago, simply putting up with Nick, could keep Alicia safe.

Back then any damage to Alicia was imaginary, the outer limits of what Nick could do. Kalinda had even teased at the idea of it, masochistically, the way you probe a sore tooth with your tongue, rub your finger over a blister, taking an odd hidden pleasure in realizing it doesn't hurt _so_ much, that things are not, in fact, as bad as they could be.

They still aren't, of course. Nick was never much of a shot; it's the carelessness that's dangerous in his case, not the precision. But spending several days with the Florrick children has only given Kalinda a clearer picture of what's at stake. He could come back, if he chose to. Best if he's distracted by looking for her.

_Is he dangerous? You said he was dangerous._

She has a little more leisure this time around, so she packs a little more carefully, picking and choosing clothes, sliding orange notebooks into the duffel's inside pockets. The money situation is a problem—half her cash went to Nick's bus station locker in Detroit, and a massive withdrawal from Kalinda Sharma's bank accounts could result in unwanted attention, and certainly Lockhart/Gardner has nothing to offer at the moment—but she can make it work, she has before. Nick won't recover for a while. She doesn't have to disappear completely, not right away.

She had been ready to disappear. And she should have. Back then nothing would have happened to Alicia; Bill and Nick would have had no idea that she really mattered. They would have treated her like a lawyer, pumped her for some information at the office, let her go, let it go. Then Nick would have pursued Kalinda, or not, but Alicia would have had nothing to do with it.

She'll hate losing Lockhart/Gardner. That's been, in many ways, the best part of being Kalinda Sharma, the pleasure of her own ability, seeing it serve people she respected. But after the last week it seems like part of her past already, like she's looking back at it through a tunnel, exhaust fumes blurring her vision. She'll be someone else and find something else that makes her happy. Or she won't.

_He said he'd kill you if I didn't come._

Kalinda is pretty sure she has everything she'll need. She zips the duffel, lays it on the floor beside her bed, which is still imprinted with Nick and still smells of him. If she had her way she would torch this place, but you can't burn down an apartment like you can an isolated house and it wouldn't do to set a pattern. And she liked it here until he showed up.

_I am liking it here._

Her phone buzzes. The sender is Grace Florrick, and the text simply reads, "4got about soccer game."

When Grace found Kalinda still keeping watch on the second day, she insisted on exchanging phone numbers "just in case." Kalinda never expected to actually hear from her, and is ready to assume the message is meant for one of her school friends when another message follows. "Have 2 go, also mom and dad say we need a break. can u check on mom pls? thx."

Kalinda sighs.

/

She finds Alicia alone in her room, staring listlessly out the window onto the end of a flat gray day. She looks like she might have been crying, though Kalinda can't be sure. She hovers in the doorway, wishing she were Cary, wishing she came as a caretaker with something to offer. Now that she's left the hospital she's finding it very difficult to re-enter.

But Alicia senses her presence and looks up. There's more color on her face, including bluish shadows beneath her eyes. Even turning her head looks like it might hurt her.

Kalinda waves her phone. "I got a text from Grace."

Alicia smiles. "Smart girl," she says quietly. "I thought I needed to be alone, but when I'm alone …" Her good hand flips in the air, a tired, helpless gesture. "I don't think I should be. Not for a while."

Kalinda nods fervently.

"It hurts," says Alicia, her voice soft and ragged. "It really hurts."

"Yeah. I bet." Looking at Alicia, Kalinda can almost feel it herself. She slides into her seat and strokes Alicia's hand, not sure what else to do. "Do you want the morphine?"

"Yes, but no. I want to be awake. At least to try."

Kalinda nods.

"And the kids," Alicia goes on. "They should be at my apartment, I asked Peter to come and stay, but Grace says it's easier for them to be in Highland Park, it's closer to school. I'm going to be in here for _weeks_, Kalinda, and I haven't been away from them for this long. Not ever." She stops and closes her eyes for a second. Kalinda watches her closely. A twinge of pain passes over her face as she continues. "And the police, Kalinda—"

"Did you talk to Diane?" Kalinda asks.

"On the phone, yes. They're coming back to get my statement this evening, when she can be here." Alicia rolls her eyes. "Peter's furious."

"That's too bad. I'm glad, about Diane."

"Yes, so am I." Alicia waits and studies Kalinda. "Where'd you go?"

"Home," Kalinda answers.

"Did you pack?"

Alicia's voice has suddenly gotten colder, as if it were a year ago and they were sitting in the conference room and not the hospital.

_Icy._

It's hard, very hard, to speak. "Yeah."

"When are you going?"

Kalinda opens her mouth to answer, but then she doesn't say anything.

"You know," says Alicia, "a lot of information will probably come out after you leave."

"I know," Kalinda says. She's thought about that, and it's unfortunate—for Cary and Will to know she's married to Nick for instance—but there doesn't seem to be much she can do.

"You know who—did this."

Kalinda swallows. "Yes. You saw him?"

"Yes. He wasn't doing much to hide himself."

Kalinda nods. That's not surprising. Stupid, of course, but not surprising.

"When they find out you're married to him," Alicia says. "If you've run. They might think you were … involved."

Kalinda stares.

Alicia stares back.

_What's going on, Kalinda?_

Kalinda says, nearly choking on the words, "Do—do you think that?"

Alicia looks at her coolly. It's more focus than Kalinda has seen from her in four days. Silence coats her features.

"No."

Her reply comes just a second too late. Kalinda's already burst into tears.

She hides her face in her hand, trying to bite the sobs back. She shouldn't be the one crying now, but she's barely slept in a week and for Alicia to think, to even consider—

"Kalinda?" Alicia's voice is completely different now. She sounds, among other things, surprised.

Kalinda can't say anything at all, and there's nothing to do but wait until the wave subsides. The tears rip out of her. She shakes with them. She is exhausted, and humiliated, and everything is echoing in her head, and staying in this room seems as impossible as running from it.

She hears the hum of Alicia's bed rising up. She feels a hand on her shoulder, tentative, then sliding off.

"I shouldn't have said that," Alicia says. "I know you—I know it's ridiculous."

"No. You're right. I was—You told me what he said to you, and I could have—I should have—I know what he does, but when I—" There's no real use to trying to explain this, to trying to explain Nick, or herself. She lifts her face, tries to meet Alicia's eyes even though she can barely see them. Alicia's sitting up, looking at her with an expression Kalinda finds it impossible to read.

"I almost killed you," Kalinda finishes, her voice a whisper.

"No," Alicia says. "Nick Savarese almost killed me."

"He's my husband."

"And my client."

"He was only here because of me."

"Actually," Alicia says dryly, "he was here because of _me_. If you want to get technical."

"He was looking for me. And he only went after you because I—"

"Kalinda." Alicia looks at her. "What do you get if you win?"

Kalinda stops, looks at Alicia, breathing hard. She would like to leave this hospital room. She would like to have left it already.

"This isn't your fault. It isn't anybody's but the person who did it." Alicia sits back, leading Kalinda to notice that she was barely an inch off the mattress in the first place. Somehow she seemed taller.

They're silent, although Alicia's myriad machines continue to beep and hum. Outside the window the day is slipping inexorably into sunset. It's so cloudy that there are only a few streaks of color, burning at the edges of the gray. Kalinda feels unsteady, like pieces of the floor have disappeared. The lack of sleep, she supposes, was bound to catch up sooner or later. She looks at Alicia, who is looking a little bit past her, as if she's unable to focus.

"I thought you'd died," Alicia says softly. "When he was there and you weren't. I thought he'd killed you already. I thought I was just—next."

"I thought—"

And Kalinda stops. What did she think? Nick wouldn't kill Kalinda, she had never worried about that. He had hurt her, certainly, made her miserable, damaged her professional life, asked her to transform back into a woman who had long since vaporized into ashes. But none of that was the danger. She stares at the mounds that are Alicia's feet beneath the covers and says, so softly she hopes Alicia won't hear her, "I thought I was going to lose you."

That was what had kept her bound beside Will in icy silence for endless hours: the simple impossibility of a world without Alicia in it.

Alicia looks at her sharply. The sharpness is a relief. She reaches out again to stroke Kalinda's shoulder. With her eyes open this time, Kalinda can see that even that small movement must be agonizing for Alicia, pulling at the muscles that have bunched up to protect her gaping wounds, at her newly forming skin.

"You didn't," Alicia says.


	5. Chapter 5

Sometimes Kalinda thinks she can smell Diane Lockhart. She doesn't know how else to explain it. Minutes or hours could have passed—this hospital tunnels and distorts time in inexplicable ways—but Kalinda knows that Diane has entered the building a full five minutes before she comes into Alicia's room, a sleek camel-hair coat falling smoothly over her hips. She stops in the doorway, taking in the scene. Kalinda shakes Alicia's good arm gently, and Alicia starts.

"I'm sorry I couldn't make it earlier," Diane says, her voice like brandy in the air.

"I understand," Alicia says.

"You're looking … well, I won't say well," says Diane. "But—how are you feeling?"

Alicia purses her lips, and Diane nods. She sits briskly in the chair beside Alicia's left foot.

"Kalinda," she says, "could you give us a moment?"

Kalinda nods and has already half-risen from her chair when Alicia says, "Kalinda can stay."

Both Diane and Kalinda stare at her. Alicia continues, "There are things we might … need her for."

"All right," says Diane. Kalinda doesn't think she wants to be here for this, but as usual, she's out of choices. She sits back down and crosses her legs, slides an orange notebook from the pocket of her jacket. It's a case. It's just a case.

"I understand, Alicia," Diane says, "why you've waited. But it is important for the police to have a statement. At this point, your memory is really the only possible lead."

"I know," says Alicia. "But the situation is … complicated. For myself and for the firm. I was shot by one of our clients."

Diane seems to falter for a moment. "You're sure?"

"Yes."

"And may I ask?"

"Nick Savarese. The tow-truck bid."

Diane opens her mouth, but Alicia continues, as if she's been practicing this speech in her head for hours. Which, when Kalinda considers it, seems likely. The words rattle out of her, more words than Kalinda has heard from her since before the bullets. "A few days before all this happened, I had made the decision to drop Mr. Savarese as a client, as he no longer seemed likely to bring profit to the firm. At that point he made a veiled threat—veiled enough," she says, off Diane's look, "that I was unsure of whether to take it seriously. But it was in that—that vein that when he called on Monday and said he had a bomb in the parking garage across State Street, I felt compelled to take him seriously."

A bomb doesn't even make any sense, Kalinda thinks, reeling with confusion. Alicia would have warned someone about a threat of that scale, would have figured out how to handle it with courage and discretion; surely Diane knows this about her. But Alicia's continuing the story, and Kalinda turns her attention back to her.

"So I left the office," she says, speaking a little more slowly now. "My assistant was made aware that I was leaving, but I didn't speak to anyone else. I left our building and went across State. When I arrived in the parking garage …" Alicia wets her lips. Kalinda doesn't think she should take Alicia's hand, not in front of Diane, but then she's not sure why she's here at all, why Alicia is making her listen to this. She settles for running her fingers along the mattress near Alicia's arm. "Mr. Savarese had instructed me to come … down to the third level. I followed his instructions and I expected to see … The—the only person there was Mr. Savarese himself, holding a handgun. He said—" Alicia's voice is faltering. "He said—"

"It's all right, Alicia."

Diane's voice, as always, stills the room. Through the glass in the door, Kalinda sees an orderly pass with a cart of dinner trays. As always, he skips Alicia's room.

"You're certain it was Nick Savarese—in the garage as well as on the phone? You got a good look at his face?"

"I—yes. I did."

"Alicia, we—well, I should say, Cary—received a call from the police in Michigan several hours ago. Nick Savarese was found stabbed to death in Detroit this morning. They found our cards—yours, Cary's, the firm's—in one of his pockets."

Even the humming and beeping seem to still in Kalinda's ears.

Alicia finds her voice. "Well, that's …" She doesn't seem to know how to end the sentence. "Oddly," she says, "I don't think Peter will be happy."

Diane nods. "Do you think Mr. Savarese acted alone, Alicia?"

"I do."

Kalinda's dizzy, and she thinks she sways a little on her chair. Both women notice. Alicia speaks first.

"Kalinda," she says. "I think I'm going to need a little … more of the pain medication. Would you mind getting one of the nurses for me?"

"Yeah," murmurs Kalinda, "yeah, of course." She slides by Diane and out the door, grateful beyond words. She's a little unsteady on her feet, but right now the last thing she wants is to stop walking. Her boots echo on the linoleum.

She circles the sixth floor, passing nurses, her hands in her pockets and her elbows swiveled out.

So he did leave. He went to Detroit, maybe went to the locker (she'd been careful about prints, she was pretty sure), was ready to take the ferry. And someone—maybe Bill, maybe one of a thousand other enemies or rivals—found him or figured it out.

She's not sorry, but when she blinks all she can see is his body curled in on itself, his blood pooling on the tiles in a public restroom, soaking the seams of his leather jacket, his mouth crooked and open, blood on his teeth.

She must circumnavigate the floor a dozen times, feeling trapped and unsteady. When the nurses at the front desk start to look at her with concern, she finds herself back at Alicia's door just as Diane is slipping out of it. Kalinda nods at her and tries to smile.

"Kalinda," Diane says.

"Yeah?"

"We need you back."

Kalinda nods.

"Good. I'll see you on Monday." Diane smiles—a little tightly, Kalinda thinks—and continues briskly down the hall.

A nurse Kalinda doesn't recognize gives her a warning look as she opens the door to Alicia's room. Visiting hours are probably ending. Usually no one bothers Kalinda about this, they've gotten used to her and she has the State's Attorney's tacit approval, but probably this woman has been on vacation or something.

Kalinda ignores her, shuts the door, and sits down beside a glassy-eyed Alicia. Again the room is silent, still. There's something frightening about looking at Alicia's face, so Kalinda doesn't do it.

"Tell me you didn't," Alicia says.

"I didn't."

"Promise me."

"I only lied to you once, Alicia."

Both of them wince and look down.

"You only went home?" Alicia says after a moment.

"Yeah."

"Can anyone confirm you were there?"

"At my building? Probably. I don't know. I don't remember. Not at my apartment. I think the parking level has a security camera. I'll find out." Too many words, Kalinda chides herself. "It'll be all right, Alicia. No one knows about him—I mean, about him and me—except for you."

"And people in your building." Kalinda has never told Alicia the ways that Nick was in her home, but she doesn't question how Alicia knows it. That was always what scared Kalinda about their friendship, how little she had to say for Alicia to understand.

"Nobody notices. It's fine. I'm fine."

"You're not," Alicia says.

"I have to go back to work on Monday."

"Diane?"

"Yeah."

"They need you."

"They need you, too. Cary's picking up your whole caseload."

"Even Evelyn Harmond? Poor Cary." Evelyn Harmond, Kalinda recalls, is an extraordinarily wealthy woman in her mid-sixties who's suing her late brother's widow over a disputed portion of the inheritance. "Make sure you help him out."

"I will."

"It's all right," says Alicia.

"What?"

"If you're mourning him."

Kalinda stands up and walks to the window.

"He was your husband, Kalinda," Alicia says softly behind her. "I do understand."

"Do you feel better?" Kalinda says, staring at the dull concrete buildings and her own and Alicia's spectral reflections.

"What?"

"Knowing he's dead. Do you feel better?"

Alicia's reflection opens and closes its mouth, thinking for a minute. "I think I do. Is that all right?"

"Of course it's all _right_, Alicia!"

Even Kalinda can hear the pain in her own voice. She closes her eyes. Behind her, there's some kind of scuffling, as if Alicia is moving, which Kalinda knows she can't really do.

"Come here," Alicia says.

Kalinda shakes her head.

"Please, Kalinda."

When Kalinda finally turns, she sees Alicia has shifted over to the left just slightly. She pats the space that she has made, indicating that Kalinda should sit.

Kalinda stares at the rumpled sheet for a minute, all hospital corners forgotten in the effort that it took Alicia to move. She sees blood on them for a second, then blinks it away. "I think—I think I need to go home."

Alicia's eyes look tired. "All right," she says.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Kalinda says, trying to keep her tone as brisk and as Diane-like as possible. She hasn't left Alicia alone before, certainly not alone and awake, and she's not sure whether she's supposed to touch her as a farewell. Alicia's not giving her any indications. "Tomorrow," she repeats, and the door is heavy underneath her hand. Behind her, the monitors beep steadily.


	6. Chapter 6

Lockhart/Gardner hasn't changed in Kalinda's absence, though it seems to her that people are giving a wide berth to the half-empty office. Then again, she may just notice it because she's doing so herself.

"Missed you," Will says quietly, seriously. Sometimes Kalinda thinks he looked more natural during his suspension, without a tie, neck of his shirt open. As it is, he looks like he wants to ask her something and can't get the question to emerge. She gives him a quick smile, as gentle as she can, and darts down the hall.

Kalinda talks to Diane; she talks to Julius and David Lee and avoids Eli. She sorts the cases that piled up in the preceding week, making sure to prioritize Kathleen Harmond's finances so that Evelyn Harmond will get off Cary's back. She spends as many hours as she can in front of her laptop. The streets between home and the office were treacherous; she doesn't feel fully confident in her ability to walk around, let alone drive.

Kalinda listens. The few at the firm who encountered Nick—Cary and Alicia's respective assistants, three paralegals, the girl at the front desk—have suddenly acquired a new level of cachet during coffee breaks. The consensus is that all got a "weird feeling" from "that guy," though they claim no responsibility for ignoring their instincts.

The gossip tends to quiet when Kalinda comes close, but the same thing happens in the presence of Will or Eli; it's about their connection to Alicia, nothing more. No one has linked Kalinda to Nick Savarese, except perhaps for Cary, who corners her in the hallway.

"Are you all right?" he says.

"I'm fine."

"You don't look fine."

"Thanks."

"Is Alicia all right?"

"As well as she can be."

Nick followed Kalinda through her dreams all weekend, wounds bubbling in his throat, his gut, and his groin, blood smeared across one cheekbone. "Who next, Kalinda?" he said quietly, giving a half-cocked grin with blood on his lips, her name still an epithet. Desperate to contain him, she hadn't left the apartment until this morning when she had to, Saturday and Sunday stretching around her like deserted highways, like ferries on a lake in the middle of the night.

"I saw you talking to him," Cary says.

"Who?"

"Mr. Tow Truck. You knew him before?"

"Do you really want to know?"

That always used to work on Alicia, at least back in the day, but Cary just says "yes" and looks at Kalinda steadily. His eyes are much more demanding than they used to be, and Kalinda doesn't like it. She shoves the notes on Kathleen Harmond into his hand and ducks away.

The day moves quickly, too quickly. Kalinda had almost forgotten working, forgot how much marvelous room it takes up inside her, leaving little space for ghosts to rattle around. She thinks she'd stay here all night if she could.

It's almost funny, Kalinda thinks. If she'd somehow heard three or four years ago that Nick had been killed, she's not even sure she would have blinked. The relief would have flooded her like heroin, the simple feeling that Leela was gone, that the one door into that life had closed, locked, without her having to touch it. She has to live now with the recognition of things that won't ever be gone, from his touch on her skin to the fact that she wanted it.

_I have difficulty being away from him._

Kalinda slides her jacket on, slides her hands into her pockets. Through several layers of glass, Will catches her eye and nods to her. She returns the nod, brisk, out the door.

/

There are two chairs set by the right side of Alicia's bed, containing Zach Florrick and a pretty, petite black girl Kalinda doesn't recognize. All three look up as Kalinda enters.

"Hi, Kalinda," says Zach. "This is Nisa, my girlfriend. Nisa, this is Kalinda, she works with my mom."

"Hi," the girl says. Both teenagers sound oddly cheerful. Their hands are interlaced and rest on Zach's knee.

"Hi," Kalinda says, pressing her lips into something that she hopes can pass for a smile. She leans up against the wall.

After two days, Alicia looks noticeably better, which Kalinda supposes could account for the adolescents' chipper mood. Her bed is set a little higher than it could have been on Friday, there's real color in her cheeks, and Kalinda thinks at least a couple of machines have been retired—there seems to be more space around Alicia somehow, more air. It would be better if Alicia were looking at her, but even watching her like this floods Kalinda with a pleasure that seems to surge up from deep in the past, belong to another woman.

"Are you going to stay for a while, Kalinda?" Zach says. "I was going to drive Nisa home."

"Yeah—yeah," Kalinda says.

"It's good to see you," says Zach.

"Good to meet you," Nisa agrees, though Kalinda thinks she gives Zach a little sidelong glance as she says it. She shoulders a hefty backpack. "I'm really glad you're feeling better, Mrs. Florrick."

"Thanks for coming, Nisa." Alicia's voice is a little hoarse. "I'm glad to see you. Zach, honey, are you coming back later?"

"I was going to."

"Good." Alicia's smile is tired. "Call the room number if you change your mind. I'm still not getting much of a signal." Alicia's smartphone is charging on her bedside table. Kalinda's pretty sure it wasn't there on Friday, but she guesses that now, with Alicia's statement and the confirmation of Nick's death, the investigation is closed, evidence bags unsealed.

"Bye, Mom." Zach leans over carefully to kiss Alicia's forehead. "Bye, Kalinda." He follows Nisa out the door, shutting Alicia and Kalinda into silence.

"I thought you went anyway," Alicia finally says.

Kalinda shakes her head mutely.

"And then I thought—You could have said something."

"Alicia—"

"Don't, Kalinda."

_No, Kalinda. No._

Kalinda doesn't.

"I know nothing about your life, do you understand that? He's dead and you're gone suddenly and for all I know … This is already too much, Kalinda. I can't … do that too."

Kalinda doesn't know what to say. "I would have answered. If you'd called me."

"Yes. Why is that my job?"

Kalinda presses her lips together.

"Please, Kalinda." She sounds near tears suddenly, and Kalinda dares to look at her, startled. Alicia's whole face is trembling. "I think about it enough already."

Kalinda's about to answer—she doesn't understand what Alicia means, not really—but there's a knock at the door and both women automatically answer, "Come in." Kalinda, at least, is expecting Zach, expecting he's left behind some small item or another, but the person who enters is a man she's never seen before.

"Excuse me," says the man, hovering in the doorway. He has bristly dark hair and broad shoulders, a trace of an accent. "I'm sorry if I'm interrupting."

"And you are?" Kalinda says coolly, rising to her feet. She will disembowel a reporter if he worked his way in. She doesn't even want to think about the other possibilities.

"Hector Ramirez."

Both Kalinda and Alicia recognize the name. "Come in," Alicia says quickly. Kalinda pulls out the chair next to her and shifts her own seat to Alicia's left side, giving him the place of honor on the right.

"You look better than the last time I saw you," Mr. Ramirez says to Alicia, smiling. "Not sure I would have recognized you."

"That's good, I think," Alicia says.

"Definitely. Do you feel well?"

"I wouldn't say well," Alicia says. "But better—I am feeling better." She breathes as deeply as she can manage. "Thank you. I can't thank you enough."

"You'd do the same," Mr. Ramirez says. "Most people would."

"Maybe," says Alicia. "I used to think so. I'm less sure now."

Mr. Ramirez nods, absorbing that. He turns to Kalinda. "I didn't catch your name." He raises his eyebrows, indicating that he caught her hostility when he came in.

"Kalinda." He seems to expect her to go on. She gestures to Alicia. "We … work together." She can no longer give words to the role Alicia plays in her life—"friend" has long since ceased to express it—and she wouldn't dare assume anything about how Alicia would refer to her.

"Ah, yes, at that law firm, right? I think I spoke to—was it your boss?"

Kalinda nods.

"Nice that you're here," he says, a little absently. He adds to Alicia, "Your husband came to thank me, too. He's a very nice man."

Alicia nods.

"I didn't know who you were. If you think that. It wasn't for anything like that. I just—"

"I understand, Mr. Ramirez," Alicia says, and her voice sounds like it's drifted out of the past, her old handholding voice. She adds wryly, "Even if that was why, you still would have saved my life."

Abruptly, Kalinda remembers her drive back from Detroit, which seems more like a world ago than the week it actually is. She remembers cracking the window, even going sixty on a highway in the Midwestern winter, the cold air invigorating and firming her resolve, sharpening her focus. There was nothing that could have stopped her. She had rammed Bill with her car already, she was putting all the pieces into place. She would be free of Nick.

"Have they found the person who did it? I was sorry I couldn't help—"

"You did more than enough," Kalinda says quietly. She's looking at her own hands, then Mr. Ramirez's, but she can feel Alicia looking at her.

She'd thought she was protecting Alicia. Saving her. And she wasn't. And here is the man who was.

"Actually," says Alicia, "he's dead."

"Oh," says Mr. Ramirez. Alicia nods but doesn't say anything. "Everything all right?" he adds. "Do they know who killed him?"

Alicia says, "It doesn't matter much to me."

"Well, I just wanted to see you were well," says Mr. Ramirez. "I would have come sooner, but for a while they were telling me you needed the rest. I just—it was hard, seeing you like that. I wanted to see you well."

"Thank you," says Alicia, the handholding voice again. "I hope that when I'm out of here, you'll let us have you over for dinner. My family."

"Oh, if—if you'd be all right with that. If your kids would be comfortable. You have kids, right?"

"Yes. And they'd be as glad to meet you as I am. You should at least," says Alicia, grinning a little, "let me buy you a new shirt."

He laughs then, a full laugh that bounces up to the ceiling. "If you've still got your sense of humor, you'll be fine."

Kalinda's reached for his hand before she knows she did it. "Thanks." She squeezes the word out and meets his eyes before dropping her gaze, letting go.


	7. Chapter 7

Kalinda starts. She's back in the familiar chair, her neck cramped, the air stale, her clothing clammy. It's midnight or something close to it. The night outside the window is polluted and a little too bright, and the hospital's dim and quiet, just the odd pat and squeak of rubber soles across linoleum as the night staff walks by Alicia's door.

Then Alicia whimpers again, and Kalinda realizes what woke her. In sleep, the strain is clear on Alicia's face and the parts of her body that can jerk do so over and over, small, intense, painful movements. Kalinda can't watch, so she leans over and touches Alicia's good shoulder, realizing as she does that it may be a mistake. "Alicia, wake up." Alicia makes a fearful, strangled sound that Kalinda doesn't know the word for. She shivers. "Alicia. Alicia."

Alicia's eyes flash open, and it seems to take her a few terrified minutes to recognize Kalinda. Kalinda grips her hand.

"You're safe," Kalinda says softly. "You're in the hospital, that's all. Everything's all right. You're here. I'm here. Nobody else. We're safe. It's all right." She's pretty sure these are the kinds of things people say when they want to soothe.

After a few seconds that stretch on for too long, the tension in Alicia's neck releases, and she falls back to her pillow. "I'm sorry."

"No," says Kalinda.

"Nightmare," Alicia says unnecessarily. Her voice is quiet and hard to hear, even more hoarse than it was that afternoon. Kalinda hopes she's not developing a cold. Losing her spleen, she knows, leaves Alicia much more vulnerable to infection.

"I thought the painkillers were supposed to knock those out of you," Kalinda says.

"No."

"I'm sorry."

Kalinda notices that she's sitting on the edge of Alicia's bed, Alicia's hand still in hers, her right hip pressed to Alicia's. She flushes with warmth and doesn't move. Alicia's eyes are liquid in the reflected light from the hallway, her cheekbones and hairline even finer in the dark. Kalinda stares at her while each woman's breath evens out.

"They won't …" The rest of what Alicia says is unintelligible.

"What?" says Kalinda.

Alicia tugs on her arm. Kalinda leans closer and hears Alicia's question, deep and soft in her throat. "They won't come after you, will they?"

"Who?"

"Whoever … killed him."

"I don't think so," says Kalinda, talking almost as quietly as Alicia is. "I'm not worried."

"Because you're you?" Alicia's breathing still seems labored. Kalinda wants to talk to a doctor in the morning. "Or because there's nothing to worry about?"

"There weren't a lot of people who knew about me, Alicia. There never were exactly, the way we lived then, and—especially not down here, not in Chicago. I kept him out of my real life, and he's never been—successful. You saw that. Not with friends or even—contacts. He's doesn't, um, he didn't …" Kalinda struggles for words, wondering why she's talking so much. "Endear himself."

"Except to you."

Kalinda bites her lip. "I suppose. Yeah."

"He said I was lucky," Alicia says, so softly that Kalinda has to lean even closer, feel Alicia's breath near her ear. "When I saw him. He said I wasn't going to suffer like you did."

"You mean, when it—not your nightmare?" Kalinda's a little confused, and she hates Nick and she's not ready to think about Alicia in any kind of pain or about him speaking. Her breast brushes Alicia's shoulder as she listens.

"Yes. I just thought about what he must have done to you, and he—His aim wasn't so—he thought I was going to die," Alicia says. Her breath tickles the skin on Kalinda's cheek and neck. "He was trying to hit my heart."

Kalinda turns her head, and her lips touch Alicia's.

It's sweet, so sweet that Kalinda forgets herself, though she's still careful not to put any of her weight on Alicia. Their lips and tongues brush together gently, gently. Alicia's good hand runs down Kalinda's arm, rests on her hip, and Kalinda feels Alicia's dry, soft skin underneath her own fingertips. It's frightening, to feel Alicia this fragile this close, but Kalinda doesn't want to stop, doesn't want to pull away.

Everything around Kalinda, everything that isn't Alicia, seems blurred and unreal, so much so that she wonders if she's absorbing some of Alicia's meds. Sweetness surges up in her, spreads through her limbs like vines. If she never feels anything else but this, she'll be all right.

When they stop, Kalinda lays her head next to Alicia's, taking up as little space as she can. She runs her fingers along Alicia's face and neck and shoulders, along the thin, sharp edges of her bones. Kalinda doesn't want to stop touching her. She doesn't even want to ask if this is all right, because then she might have to know. She leans in, her forehead to Alicia's temple.

"I wish I could hold you," Alicia whispers.

For some reason, that makes Kalinda giggle. Alicia laughs incredulously, as if in response to her laugh. It bubbles up to fill the dimness. Kalinda wishes she could hold Alicia, too, wishes she could slide off the hospital gown, take Alicia's breast between her lips, slide kiss by delicious kiss down Alicia's sunless skin and—

She hears herself breathing a little too heavily, and has to stop. Although she's pretty sure that the beeps that monitor Alicia's heartbeat have quickened.

"Am I hurting you?" Kalinda whispers.

"No." Alicia turns slowly, clumsy in the dark, and ends up kissing Kalinda's eyebrow. "No."

Apropos of next to nothing, Kalinda continues, "I never wanted to hurt you."

"I know."

"Even—before." Kalinda's voice is urgent; it's suddenly imperative that Alicia understands this. "Even back then. I know how it sounds, but it wasn't about you, it was—"

"Your husband," Alicia says. "Kalinda, I know. I've thought about it." She pauses. "I've thought about a lot."

Kalinda's not sure what to say to that. "Me too," she whispers uncertainly.

"You must have been …" Alicia searches and doesn't find a word.

As far as Kalinda's concerned, she was practical. Sex has never been a practical thing for Alicia, and really, right now, Kalinda can understand how sex with Alicia might make someone lose sight of all pragmatism. She doesn't think the word will go over well with Alicia, so she doesn't say anything at all for a while. Alicia looks at her, still searching.

"Alicia, I'm sorry," Kalinda whispers, her voice breaking, if quietly. As if Alicia hadn't been hurt enough before Kalinda came into her life. Kalinda hates what she's forced, in one form or another, upon Alicia, pains she knows because they are so familiar to her: the feeling that nothing, not even your own thoughts, belongs to you anymore, the feeling that you can never again be quite safe in your body.

"Stay with me," Alicia answers, quietly.

And although she knows how desperately uncomfortable it will be, how peculiar it will appear to the nurses in the morning, Kalinda unzips her boots, places them by the right side of Alicia's bed. With great difficulty, Alicia edges a couple of inches to the left, and Kalinda slides up against her, her cheek on Alicia's good shoulder. Slowly, Alicia turns her head and kisses Kalinda's hair, and Kalinda curls her arm between Alicia's breasts, her hand light on the hospital gown, and the steady beeping of Alicia's heart smoothes them both back into sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

"Good morning."

Kalinda opens her eyes to Josie, the only one of Alicia's nurses whose name she has managed to learn.

Josie's smiling gently. Kalinda struggles to smile back. Even under more reasonable circumstances she doesn't wake easily, and this morning is anything but reasonable. She wants to be asleep, just a little longer, with her hand on the sweet, smooth flesh of Alicia's right shoulder, Alicia's breath drifting through her hair. Just another moment before she has to put it all together.

"I've got to take her down for a CT scan," Josie says. "There won't be room for you in the machine." She's a very young Latina woman with small, pretty eyes that glow when she smiles. She's almost too young for Kalinda to trust Alicia to her.

"Everything okay?" Kalinda says.

"We hope so. Don't worry." Josie's expression is tender. Kalinda has seen her leaving the building at the end of her shift, early in the morning; she noticed the pin with the pink triangle, "Silencia=Muerte," that adorns Josie's bag among a legion of others.

Kalinda separates herself from Alicia gently, gently, but still Alicia wakes up, her right arm (which had rested on Kalinda's thigh as they slept) patting the mattress as she regains her focus. She looks disoriented, and Kalinda still sees a spattering of pain across her cheeks.

"I'm here," Kalinda says, softly. Alicia stares at her, and Kalinda wonders if that was even a question in Alicia's mind. "You just need to get—"

"The scan, Mrs. Florrick, remember. We talked about it yesterday."

"Right," Alicia says. She looks at Kalinda. "It's good, Kalinda. It means they think I'm well enough for it."

"You could be out of here in a few days, Mrs. Florrick." Josie grins. The idea of Alicia out of the hospital sounds inexplicably terrifying to Kalinda. She turns away, just a little, and feels Alicia looking at her.

"I'll see you later, Kalinda?" Alicia says softly. Her voice is still croaky.

"I have to go to work." Kalinda does her best to smile. "I'll see you tonight, yeah?"

Kalinda isn't sure what to do. She hovers by the chair where her jacket and boots still rest. That feels tremendously uncomfortable, so she sits down to zip her boots on while Josie unplugs Alicia's machines—there are only a couple now—and recruits a physician's assistant from the corridor to help wheel the unwieldy bed out of the room. Kalinda watches them turn, then follows them into the hall after some hesitation.

"Josie?"

"Yes?" It's possible Josie still doesn't know Kalinda's name; Kalinda is pretty sure she's never introduced herself. Josie trots the few steps back towards Kalinda, leaving the physician's assistant, a young white man with freckles and a brownish-blond bowl cut, to steer the bed on his own.

"Her voice has been like that for more than a day. Alicia's." Saying Alicia's name somehow makes Kalinda feel she's violated a sacred trust. "If you could mention that to Dr. Liang, that would be great. If it's strep or something—"

"Sure," says Josie. "I'll let the doctor know." The smile she gives Kalinda is satisfied; Josie is pleased with what she's said, and with whatever conclusion she has come to. Kalinda watches them round the corner, headed towards the elevators. Then she ducks back into Alicia's room to put her jacket on.

/

Midafternoon finds Kalinda in her own office, reviewing the cellphone records of the cheating hotelier represented by Louis Canning.

She's partway through October 2011 when her idiocy hits her like a football to the gut. She leans back in her chair, her lips parted, her breath rushing loudly between her teeth, trying not to push all the documents off the table.

What was she thinking?

She hasn't been thinking, that much is clear. Even if she were the sort of person who could be trusted with Alicia Florrick, she's been manipulative beyond belief. Not her usual manipulations—she's crossed a line, acting out her fantasies (or, to be fair, the first few minutes of her fantasies) on someone more drugged than conscious, a colleague and friend still in the potent grip of violence and trauma. Violence and trauma that come from Kalinda, come with Kalinda. Kalinda is blinded by her own desires, which have led her to nothing but disaster in the last several months.

"You all right?"

"Huh?"

"You look a little … scared," Cary says, edging into her office. "Not the first word that comes to mind when I think of you."

"I'm fine, Cary."

"How's Alicia?"

"What?"

"Did you see her yesterday? After work?"

"Yeah. Better. She's better," Kalinda says.

"I'm glad," Cary says. "I can't believe … that was a little rough for me, honestly. Seeing her last week."

Kalinda has no desire to go through that door. "She might go home on Friday. She's going to have some tests today."

"What are you working on?" Cary says.

"Canning." The case, like most of those that have fallen to Kalinda since yesterday, had been Alicia's. Cary has taken second chair on it now, Julius Cain first.

"Anything good?"

"Not yet."

"I bet Canning misses Alicia."

"Sure."

"Do you think he knows what happened to her?"

"Everyone knows," says Kalinda.

Everyone does know. Which only adds another tier of error to Kalinda's already precarious tower. Too many people pass in and out of Alicia's hospital room to ensure any kind of privacy, and even if she wanted to, Kalinda couldn't ask Alicia to endure another scandal on top of her physical recovery. Kalinda will sleep in her own bed tonight, maybe return to the hospital on Thursday. With carnations, a few trashy magazines.

"I guess," says Cary. "What was going on with you and the tow-truck guy?"

"Nothing."

"Kalinda, stop being an ass," Cary says. Kalinda raises her eyebrows, but Cary doesn't budge or falter. "Did it ever occur to you that it could have been me?"

His eye. Kalinda swallows. Neither of them speaks for a while.

"Yeah. It did."

"And?"

"And you should think about it, Cary." Kalinda isn't sure what else to say, how else to explain this. "There are reasons I don't want people in my life."

Cary shakes his head. "The problem isn't people in your life. The problem is that you won't admit we're in it." He pats the pile of phone records. "Let me know what you find out."

He slides out the glass door, closes it gently behind him.

Kalinda blinks, then turns back to the phone records. They've been trying to track down the mogul's mistress since before Alicia was shot, apparently, but this is the first day of access to the phone records and Kalinda remembers very little about the case. Their client, the ex-wife, wants access to a share of the profits given her role in starting the company, but Canning's client claims the marriage was hardly functional at that point. (It's probably just as well, Kalinda thinks, that Alicia's off this case.) However, comments from their daughter have led Kalinda to suspect that the timeline's a bit off; the lover is the only one who could confirm it.

Kalinda's phone rings. It's an unknown number, but somehow she's confident of who it is. "Hi," she says, unable to keep the tension out of her voice. She wanted some time to _think_, at least.

"Hi." There's a short pause, as if Alicia needs to breathe. "This is the phone in my room. I'm still not getting a cellphone signal."

Kalinda nods for several seconds before she remembers that Alicia can't see her. "I'm at work," she says.

"I _know_, Kalinda." Alicia sounds amused, though tired. "What are you working on?"

"The Mercury Hotels case."

"I think the other woman was from Arizona," Alicia says, her voice still scratchy. "If that helps. Who has it?"

"Julius and Cary."

"Tell them to kick Canning in the balls from me."

Kalinda laughs out loud. The sound is unfamiliar; she supposes she hasn't laughed in a while. "This is a new side of you."

"I've learned from the best," says Alicia. "I'll see you tonight?"

Kalinda's throat freezes.

"I thought so," Alicia sighs, the signal distorting her voice just slightly, a mosquito buzz underneath her words. Her exhalation rushes through the phone, as abrasive as sandpaper against Kalinda's ear. "Kalinda, I don't know what to tell you."

Kalinda bites her lip.

"If you want to go home, I understand," says Alicia, slowly, very slowly. "I'm grateful for … But after last night …" Kalinda doesn't even want to look up from the printed phone records, so she can only hope that neither Cary nor anyone else is watching her at the moment; even her face feels far out of her control. "I would like you to be here with me."

The silence on the phone stretches, bare as that horrible waiting room in the ICU.

"Do you want to say anything?"

"No," says Kalinda. Right now, she'd sooner stab herself in the leg with an ice pick.

Again the silence. Then Alicia says, briskly, "I feel safer. When you're here." The words sound as if they've been forced out of her, and given the potency of the drugs she's still on, Kalinda supposes that in a way they have.

Kalinda bites down on her lip again, hard, because it's trembling. When she's ready to open her mouth again, she says, "Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"I'll be there tonight, Alicia."

Alicia exhales a quiet, "Thank you."

"I have a few more hours here," Kalinda says.

"Of course."

In her mind, Kalinda sits next to Will at a bar, more than a year ago.

_You want to stop acting and actually feel?_

_Yes. Ow._

_That's what it feels like._

"Alicia?"

"Yes."

"I want to be there," says Kalinda.

Alicia says, "I know," and hangs up the phone.


	9. Chapter 9

"Can you …?" says Alicia, her voice strained with something other than pain, something like desire, something like need.

Kalinda tries to follow her gaze in the dimness; it's a second before she figures out what Alicia's asking. The force of her hesitation startles her.

It's the fourth night she's spent in Alicia's bed. Often her arrival displaces the Florrick children and their significant adolescent others; upon learning that Alicia will have company into the evening, they pile into Zach's car and return to the North Shore, offering hasty, loving goodnights to Alicia, who has spent her days taking antibiotics to fight a silly secondary case of strep throat, doing the physical therapy that her CT scan cleared her to begin.

Alicia's always eager to receive Kalinda, but tired, sliding into their kisses as easily as the sleep that follows soon behind them.

"Don't you want to?" Alicia says.

"Yeah, but … We're in a hospital," Kalinda whispers.

After the previous week, where each individual hour etched itself into her flesh, the last few nights for Kalinda have been gloriously blurred. Kissing Alicia seems to smear the very fabric of time, leaving Kalinda lost in the night, anchored by nothing but the loveliness of the woman beside her, which so far has proved more than enough. But Kalinda can't bear it when she hurts Alicia, even for a second, even when it's only a wince. She simply lies against her right side and caresses her, tender and soft and very, very careful.

"Josie wouldn't care. The door's closed, right?"

"Yeah," Kalinda says uncertainly. That's not really what she's talking about. But it's hard to think about what she's talking about when Alicia's wearing this expression, brimming with a desire Kalinda long since stopped allowing herself to wish for. Kalinda's own need for Alicia pulses, and she hopes Alicia can't tell, but she's pretty sure she can.

"Well, then?"

"You're sure you're okay?"

"Kalinda."

Kalinda sits up. Two weeks ago she couldn't have imagined this hesitation, but two weeks ago she couldn't have imagined this situation at all. She unbuttons her blouse, checking Alicia's face, so gratified by the hunger there that she almost forgets the strange vulnerability of it all. She unclasps and removes her bra, slowly, almost shyly.

"Beautiful." Alicia smiles and reaches her good arm up to palm Kalinda's breast with a deep, lovely satisfaction.

Kalinda murmurs when Alicia rubs a gentle thumb against her nipple, then gasps when she uses that to pull Kalinda forward, to propel the breast towards her lips. Kalinda's breaths are short and rough as sandpaper.

"Fuck, Alicia," she whispers, shocked at the electric surge caused by nothing more than the movement of Alicia's lips. She sighs into the dim, beeping night, and she feels Alicia's smile against her breast. For Kalinda doesn't know how long, she loses herself in it, pleasure spiking out. It's almost too much when Alicia's good hand slides up her thigh, teasing its way under the hem of her skirt. Kalinda gasps and looks up, meeting Alicia's eyes.

"I want to," Alicia says. "Do you want?"

Kalinda nods, and Alicia's fingers slip into her underwear. It's as clumsy as Kalinda would expect of someone who's never pleasured a woman and has only one functional arm, but Kalinda has years of longing to feed her and—_oh._ She squirms against Alicia's hand. Alicia watches her, and her focus feels almost as good to Kalinda as her fingers.

Kalinda wants to be quiet, but as Alicia's fingers learn their way around she can't hold back a few full moans. The madness of it all slips in and out of her mind—where she is, what has happened, who is beside her, touching her and causing unspeakably delicious sensation to shoot through her in every direction. Kalinda's breath slips out of her control. She falls forward as she comes, pressing her mouth to Alicia's shoulder to muffle noises and words she shouldn't let slip out.

Alicia kisses Kalinda's hair as she comes down, laughs a little, softly. Kalinda wants to ask what's funny, but speaking is still a bit beyond her ability and, besides, she thinks she gets it.

"Thank you," says Alicia.

Kalinda still doesn't feel she can talk. She lies against Alicia, the hospital gown thin and sweaty and soft beneath her cheek.

/

By the time Kalinda leaves the office, only a few people are still present, and judging from the parking garage when she arrives, not many more remain in the building. Talking to Evelyn Harmond's ex-husband had taken much longer than Kalinda planned, and when she finally returned and was preparing to leave, Will stepped into her office, starved for casual conversation or the closest the two of them ever come. Kalinda understands how confusing the last two weeks must have been for him, and she accepted the open beer and obliquely answered his oblique questions about Alicia's condition, leaving herself out of the equation altogether. After the third beer Will departed, claiming he would hail a taxi; Kalinda didn't want to be separated from her car and decided to wait at Lockhart/Gardner until the buzz wore off, doing a background check for David Lee's new high-profile soon-to-be divorcée.

It's late now, and Alicia will be expecting her.

And oddly enough, Kalinda realizes, she wants to be expected.

It's unfamiliar and a bit alarming. The five months she spent re-leashed to Nick made her realize anew how much she chafes at expectations, how easily using someone else's needs to build your days can leave you boxed in, trapped, paralyzed, with no means of escape. She remembers how much it took to run the first time, and the real truth is she doesn't think she has the strength to do it again. She needs to be careful, more careful than she's been. The fact that it's Alicia shouldn't change that, no matter how much Kalinda wants it to.

But all that is for a different day. Right now, Kalinda knows, Alicia needs to hear from her. Alicia needs to know where she's been, and where she will be within the hour.

She takes out her phone to call Alicia as she turns the key in the ignition. The signal in the garage tends to be spotty, but Kalinda's made a call from this spot on more than one occasion. Warm air rushes from the vents as the car springs to life, and as Kalinda sits back and listens to the phone ring, it takes her a second to feel the barrel of the gun pressing on the hinge of her jaw.

She meets his eyes in the rearview mirror, shadowy in the parking garage's dim light. Her phone hand drops to her lap slowly.

"Drive," Bill says.

Kalinda drives.


	10. Chapter 10

Her first thought is to calculate where her own gun is. The office building's security gate blocks her from carrying to work, though, and reaching for the glove compartment would earn her a bullet to the throat. She just needs to get out in the open, she supposes, onto a busy street; there's only so much he can do there.

"Turn right," he says. "Stay straight."

He laughs when he says that, and the sound of it makes Kalinda take another glance at his eyes. He's high, she realizes, higher than she's ever seen him.

Her heartbeat fills her ears. She could handle Nick when he was high because she so intimately knew his patterns when he wasn't. This is another matter altogether. Logic won't work here, at least not the kind Kalinda is used to using. Pulling over on Michigan will get her nowhere but dead.

As if sensing her fear and pleased with it—he's certainly not had the upper hand in their most recent interactions—Bill digs the gun a little deeper, metal tucking itself beneath her jawbone. There's nothing she can do about it, not without taking the car off the road.

"Turn right here," he says quietly, his voice as coiled with tension as Kalinda is herself. "Then left. Then straight."

She probably shouldn't have started driving. She starts running through her options, but anything she can think of at the moment risks other drivers, risks pedestrians. She has to wait until he lets her stop.

He's taking them onto Lower Wacker Drive, which at night is creepily surreal enough even without a weapon to your neck, drips and shadows haunting its walls, the adjacent river ghostly. In a weird, unconscious, automatic gesture, Kalinda looks down at her phone to see if she's still getting a signal.

In fact, she sees, she's still on a call.

She lets nothing about her face change, looks away from the phone smoothly, not too quickly, and hopes the spikes of dopamine in Bill's brain are sufficiently distracting. "Where are we going, Bill?" she says, breathing over the thrumming of her heart.

"Shut up," he says. "I'll tell you when we get there."

Kalinda keeps driving, lets a minute pass, hopes Alicia knows to hang on. She struggles to think of the right questions, struggles not to think of Alicia listening, Alicia reliving her own fear and her own pain. All of Alicia's pleading looks of the last two weeks pass through Kalinda's head in a rush. She can't keep hurting Alicia, can't keep putting her through this.

"How did you get into my car?" Kalinda asks. She doubts Alicia knows much about her car, but it's registered, legally, to Kalinda Sharma. That could count for something, make it easier to find.

"Decrypted. He showed me."

"Nick showed you?"

"He never showed you?" Bill laughs. "Turn right."

"We're going west?" That question runs the risk of being too obvious, but Bill ignores her. He tenses when they re-emerge aboveground on Harrison Street, but it's dark and late enough that none of the few pedestrians are really paying attention. Nor do Kalinda's tinted windows benefit her in this case.

"I told him he needed to get rid of you," Bill mutters, half to himself, jabbing the barrel into Kalinda's neck at a more aggressive angle. "Not the lawyer bitch. Couldn't convince him."

"You were part of it? Of what—what Nick did to my lawyer? To—to Mrs. Florrick?" Kalinda wouldn't mind attaching an attempted murder charge when Bill is caught. She's sorry Alicia has to hear her say anything about it, though.

"He kept saying that was how he'd get you. With the lawyer. That would be the worst for you."

Kalinda bites her lip. His grip on the gun is slackening, just a bit.

"I said if he wanted to make things bad for you, why not just make things bad for you?"

"You wanted to shoot me," Kalinda says. "And Nick didn't."

"He said the lawyer. I asked him why bother with the lawyer?"

"He—Nick didn't listen to you."

"He should have," says Bill, his hand shaking (with adrenaline, Kalinda presumes, feeling it course through her own veins like jet streams).

"Yeah, he probably should have. Because then he'd be okay and you'd be okay, yeah?"

"Then we would have had the money," Bill says, almost whines. "Where the fuck is the money now?"

Kalinda makes a split-second decision. It will give her time when they finally stop driving. "I've got it." She says it softly, a little seductively. "The rest of it. I've got it for you."

"Where?" Bill sounds like a bloodhound might if it could talk. She likes the distraction, getting him off the subject of killing. There's no reason Alicia should have to listen to that.

"I'll show you when we stop. I—I was going to run too." She's not sure why she says that; an attempt to establish rapport, she supposes.

For a second, it seems to work: he meets her eyes in the mirror like a person, like the man she knew only a time or two. But then he breaks it and his breath and words are more jarring than before.

"He should've just killed you." Bill is agitated. "When we had the chance. It would've been so much easier."

Kalinda keeps her voice calm, even, quiet. "What would have been easier?"

"Our work, bitch!"

He smacks the gun against Kalinda's throat for emphasis, hitting her at a sharp angle. The cracking sound is so close Kalinda doesn't quite hear it. She's dizzied by the pain; it takes all she has to keep driving.

"What am I supposed to do now? My name is shit for anyone who's running."

"Yeah," Kalinda says; even saying that much hurts at the moment, and it's proving extremely difficult to collect her breath. She wonders what Alicia is thinking, hearing the noise, not hearing Kalinda's voice.

"My name is _shit_!" he says again, this time shooting the glove compartment for emphasis. Kalinda jumps but only swerves a little. She needs to say something, so Alicia won't be afraid, but she can't do it; she can hardly even exhale. "His suppliers think I was the one who told the cops. I gotta get out of here," he mutters. "I gotta get out of here."

Well, that explains something, Kalinda thinks. Bill lacks the acumen to do any street-level running or dealing. Probably, since Nick left, he's been running through what remains of their supply himself. She thinks about that, two weeks on a bender. Where that would leave your brain, your instincts. The pain resonates out from her throat, and she hears a strange noise when she breathes. She hopes that noise is quiet enough that Alicia can't hear it.

He collects himself, shifts the gun to the base of her skull. "Turn left."

Unable to speak, struggling for breath and terrified that her trachea is swelling, Kalinda keeps following his directions, including a prod or two demanding that she speed up. She can't panic, can't lose control. She's lost if she does. She floors the accelerator hoping someone will pull them over.

No one does.

They pull into a dirt-packed lot somewhere southwest of McKinley Park (for the last few minutes, it's been harder to keep track of directions) between two dilapidated three-story buildings. The neighborhood looks vaguely familiar; she realizes that the towing lot, Nick's lot, isn't far away. She wonders what Bill knows about this place, what else is waiting for them.

It's late—she's not really sure how late, how long they were driving—and dark, and everything seems pretty quiet on this block. She can see a light in the window in one of the adjacent buildings, but she's pretty sure this is an area where the sound of a gunshot wouldn't cause residents to blink. She tries hard to assess her options. Running, at the moment, is definitely not one of them.

Kalinda exits the car when Bill prods her, just managing to slip the phone into her pocket. She lacks the strength to close the door. Her struggle for breath is clearly visible, and she catches confusion on Bill's face; he's high enough not to know how hard he hit her throat. She leans against the hood. Bill edges over to her and holds the gun below her left ear.

"What's the matter with you?" he asks, for a second the wheedling right-hand man she knew for years. He sounds almost concerned.

Kalinda shakes her head. That hurts, too.

Then he looks at her right hand, which she's neglected to remove from her jacket. "What's in your pocket?"

Kalinda freezes.

"Take your hand out."

Kalinda does. She tries to turn away as he reaches into her pocket, removing the phone. Unable to hold herself up, she sits heavily back down on the driver's seat.

"Who have you been talking to?" His voice is still, oddly, a little wheedling, a little teasing. She wouldn't hear the threat under it if she didn't know it was there.

If nothing else, Kalinda's grateful that she called the hospital room number, that Alicia's name doesn't appear onscreen. She doesn't say anything.

Bill drops the phone to the ground and shoots it. Kalinda starts, still lacking the necessary breath to jump up.

"Are you trying to get out of this? Don't move. Don't fucking move. You can't get out of this. For once, you can't get out of this." Bill pushes her chin up with the gun. His hand is shaking a little. Although possibly that's Kalinda's body, the pain of the new angle on her throat. He may be right.

Kalinda blinks. The sound of the gunshot would have been the last thing Alicia heard before the call went silent.

"I need your keys," he says.

"I—" Kalinda tries to take a deep breath, forces the words out. Her voice is hoarse and painful. "I have to move then. Okay? Move my hands."

She turns, just a little, trying to watch both him and the car's interior as she reaches towards the ignition. The gun is following her movement too closely. She doesn't know how to change that.

"And the money," he says. "You said you had the money."

"I do, Bill." She stops, holds the dashboard, and he presses the gun in a little harder. "Let me get it."

She goes, slowly, for the glove compartment, trying to plan her next move.

He hears the sirens just a second before she does, all his senses sharpened. "Did you call the cops?"

"I didn't." The sirens sound far away; for all she knows, it's an ambulance headed somewhere else completely, some other shots, some other victim.

"I have to get out of here," he says. He sounds panicked, and seems distracted enough. Enough.

Kalinda slips her own weapon into her hand, relieved to know where it is by feel, relieved at her own fastidiousness. Relieved, for once in the last two weeks, to feel prepared.

Bill's eyes are jumping up and down the street, trying to discern where the cops may be coming from. By the time he notices what she's holding, she's already fired.

She pulls the trigger once more, for good measure, and drops it to the ground almost immediately, unpleasantly breathless and weak.

Kalinda leans sideways against the driver's seat and watches the blood spill out onto packed, sandy dirt, reflecting a streetlight a block away and the bulb that's still bright inside the car. It's hard to take her eyes off the blood, flowing from him freely. She takes a shaky, painful breath as she listens to the sirens, which seem to be coming closer and closer.


	11. Chapter 11

The ambulance flies to the emergency room, a hospital close to where Kalinda shot Bill, far from Alicia, far from most things Kalinda considers familiar. Every breath is a struggle by the time she arrives, and she remembers little of the subsequent hours; she knows that there's something soft shoved between her shoulders, that she hears the words "emergency intubation," that she struggles even to nod her consent to something the doctor says and she can't quite understand, and that it hurts, it hurts, until an injection numbs it and she stares, dizzy, at the too-bright lights.

Before long, it's easier to breathe; a nurse places her fingers on the tube that's sticking out of her throat. She sleeps.

Gunshots swim through the tepid water of her dreams, finding paths into her temple, Cary's chest, Alicia's neck (the images of Alicia's bloodstains that seared her retinas weeks ago morph, pick up the glare of streetlights). Bill falls over and over, Nick sprawls like a malformed starfish, her throat hurts, her hands shake. As she watches them all, Kalinda cowers and evades, ducks beneath another time and another name; people crumple before her and she gazes at their collapsed forms and doesn't move and doesn't speak because she can't, because it hurts too much.

She drifts in and out for she doesn't even know how long, noting the tube when she wakes up, noting that she's breathing, actually breathing. She wonders if she's relieved. "They can take it out tomorrow," a young black male nurse says gently. She wonders if she's met him. "You're recovering fast, you're doing great."

The first time she wakes up fully, she's in another part of the hospital, a scar on her neck. (Turtlenecks for a while, she supposes. She knows she has a few.) A doctor, an older white man, drones the proper care and maintenance of the injury and the scar and if all goes well she will be released in two more days but she'll have to take care of herself.

"You've certainly caused plenty of uproar around here," the doctor says, smiling as if she's going to smile back.

Kalinda doesn't even care, doesn't even want to know.

Then Will sticks his head in the door. She hasn't updated her insurance information in a while, and so he's still her emergency contact, she supposes because he's the only person who would understand why he was her emergency contact.

He's been in the waiting room, and when he walks in he doesn't smile, or offer any kind of sympathy. He just sits beside her.

Probably Kalinda should care that Will's seeing her like this, scarred and voiceless and helpless, but she doesn't really; she's finding it hard to care about much of anything. She's hasn't stopped hearing the gunshot and with or without Will, all she really wants to do is sleep and forget.

Will explains that he'll be representing her too, because of course Lockhart/Gardner will be taking her case. "We've got your back, K," he says quietly, reaching out as if to touch the aforementioned part of her body, but of course it's flat against the cot.

Kalinda could see the worry behind his still eyes if she looked closely, she supposes, but she doesn't care to look too closely. Now Lockhart/Gardner—Will, Diane, even Cary—will know the details of her story, understand the clumsy violence of Bill and the intricate violence of Nick and how Kalinda stood by and let it all happen just to stay some form of Kalinda, as if she'd ever really had a choice, how she almost let Alicia become a casualty of it, how now it's killed, really killed.

_How's it going?_ Kalinda scrawls. She can talk now, a little, but she's not supposed to yet.

"It's all a holding pattern right now. They have placed a cop here, Kalinda. Just so you know. He's outside the door, posted there. He has to be. I've gotten them not to make an arrest, but you are … a person of interest."

Kalinda nods, raises an eyebrow in the direction of the door.

"I think you know him. A Frank something?"

Kalinda smiles.

"We told them you're not going anywhere. He and I."

Kalinda nods again, sighing. The sharp exhale hurts a little, but it's breath, her own. Then she writes, _Holding pattern_?

"Until they can talk to you and Alicia."

Kalinda's eyes widen.

"I mean, they've spoken to Alicia, but she only went in for an official interview today."

In the worst of the dreams Alicia was the shooter. Kalinda felt nothing when the bullet hit, but she stared up from the ground, immobile, noting her blood seeping onto the concrete between her fingers, and watched the expression on Alicia's face pass from confusion to shock to unbridled horror. In the dream Kalinda was too weak, already, to reach for Alicia, to tell her it was all right.

_She's out of the hospital?_ Kalinda writes.

"Yeah, for a few days. She got out the day after you went in." Will looks at her with an annoying, troubled and troubling understanding. "She wants to see you. But you still can't talk to each other, K. Not until the charges are cleared."

Kalinda nods. She supposes the charges should scare her, but they don't. She wonders if she can ever be scared again.

"She's the key witness," Will says. "A lot's riding on her."

Kalinda doesn't want that, but she doesn't have a lot of choice in the matter.

"You're in good hands, K. You know that," Will says quietly. "Alicia was … After your phone …"

There's a long silence. Kalinda is convinced he'll finish the sentence, and when he doesn't, she doesn't have anything to add.

_Were you with her?_ Kalinda writes.

"Later. I got there after." Will nods, a smooth jerk of his head, looks past Kalinda's scar, past her shoulder. Kalinda looks over his in return, the cheap smeared beige of the wall, the cracks in the ceiling plaster. This place is falling apart in spots. Ideally she'd move herself to a different hospital, but moving herself is, of course, out of the question. "We were all … nobody was sure for a while. You gotta take care of yourself now, K," he says, quirking one side of his mouth into part of a smile. "The firm can't take much more of this."

Kalinda keeps staring at the careless paint on the wall.

"I don't like seeing her scared," Will says. "I don't like seeing you like this."

Kalinda considers writing _Yeah_ on the pad, decides against it. But she isn't sure what else to say.

Will leans over and reaches for her notepad, scribbles. In almost illegible handwriting, Kalinda sees, he has scrawled _You need a drink_.

She smiles and clenches the sheet in her left hand. Her impulse is to bite her lip, but she thinks that it might hurt.


	12. Chapter 12

"Of course, I know you'd rather not come back at all, Ms. Sharma," Dr. Rhys intones as if it's funny. Everyone here still calls her by title, though she's heard patients down the hall addressed by their first names. "But you've got a few days away from us, at least."

Kalinda nods.

"You should be happy. It's been an amazingly smooth recovery. We're all thrilled."

Kalinda nods. Thrilled isn't the word she'd use for it, nor happy, not really. She doesn't really care. She's ready to go home, though, ready for her own bed, Nick-tainted as it is. Most of her life will be Nick-tainted, she can see that now, but she's ready to shut a door or two between herself and the world. She doesn't know how Alicia could stand these weeks of it, the constant hovering, the medical professionals and the husband and children and Kalinda herself. Kalinda doesn't want care. All she wants is silence, a silence without the echoes of gunshots in it.

"It's Mr. Gardner who will be looking after you?"

Kalinda tries to keep herself from snorting. Will will "look after her" exactly as she'll look after herself. But it was easiest to keep him on the roster; he's picking her up, will take instructions from the nurses. She says a thin, raspy, "Yeah."

_He was my husband, _Kalinda had to write the second or third time Will appeared in her hospital room. _Mr. Savarese_.

"Alicia told me," Will answered. Kalinda looked at him, startled at first, but when she thought about it she supposed it made sense. "We're doing the best we can to keep it out of it, K. We've told them you had a prior relationship. That might satisfy them."

Everyone she knew on the force, too, knowing about Nick, or Nick in some form. Kalinda didn't want to think about what she'd been reduced to in their eyes. Frank had stepped in a couple of times, but he was clearly struggling to be professional, clearly confused about how either that or friendship should be done. All it took was Kalinda raising her eyebrows (attempting, she thought, to initiate a conversation) to drive him backwards out of the room.

The day before yesterday Frank ushered in some detectives, two women Kalinda had never met, to take her statement; per Will's instruction, they offered her a keyboard for it, and she answered their questions, typing as quickly as she could. Will sat beside her, but the investigation seemed by the book; he had very few objections, very little to say. She alluded, calmly, to a "prior romantic relationship" between herself and Nick Savarese, who had been an associate of the deceased in the drug trade; she watched Frank swallow as she said it, didn't look at Will saying nothing at all. They left, finally, with a, "Thank you, Ms. Sharma, Mr. Gardner, we'll be in touch," and Frank closed the door as he walked out, Will sat beside her, touching nothing, saying nothing. Kalinda appreciated it more than she could say. Reasonably, given that she could hardly say anything at all.

"Well, I'm sure that Kenneth will remind him, but—"

There's a knock at the door. Kalinda's amused to think that Will has been nodding along to a nurse's instructions for the last five minutes, waiting it out. She pictures Will's eyes glazed over as Kenneth, the sweet young nurse who was with Kalinda the first time she woke, explains the cleaning of the scar, the ways Kalinda has to sleep. Dr. Rhys opens the door.

The only thing that could startle Kalinda more than the sight of Alicia, Grace, and Zach Florrick is that after only a second's hesitation Zach and Grace both rush forward and embrace her. Zach moves first, a little too quickly, but his sister follows almost immediately, rests her head for a second on Kalinda's right shoulder and whispers into that ear, "I'm glad you're all right."

Kalinda meets Alicia's eyes over Grace's head, then blinks and looks down. Alicia's coat is smooth down her right side and flaps from her left shoulder. She's wearing tailored gray pants and a forest green sweater, and her left arm is in a sling, a hospital contraption of blue woven plastic.

"Alicia Florrick," Alicia says to the doctor, holding her right hand out for him to shake as the younger Florricks finally step back from Kalinda. "This is Zach, and this is Grace. We'll be taking Ms. Sharma home."

"Pleasure to meet you," Dr. Rhys says, though he doesn't sound pleased and Kalinda's not sure why. "Kenneth out front has her discharge instructions—"

"Yes, I got them, thank you," Alicia says.

"Well, Ms. Sharma," the doctor says, "we'll see you back in a few days." Something about Alicia is clearly making him uncomfortable. He doesn't offer any pleasantries as he exits, which Kalinda thinks is just as well.

"Do you have any stuff here, Kalinda?" Grace asks.

Kalinda doesn't; anything she had with her was cut off or became evidence, and Will seemed dumbfounded when he brought her the packaged sweatpants and V-neck shirt that she's wearing now. She shakes her head, and a few strands of hair shake free of the loose knot the nurses assembled at the nape of her neck.

Now that there's no one to be professional with, Alicia is watching her, her expression one that Kalinda doesn't recognize. "Grace, honey, Zach," she says finally, "can you give us a minute?"

"Sure, Mom," Zach says quickly, and Grace murmurs her own assent. The siblings exchange a look as they exit that makes Kalinda wonder just how perceptive they are, how much they understand about Kalinda and their mother, but Grace still brushes Kalinda's arm with her hand as she passes.

"They insisted on coming," Alicia says as the door closes behind her children. "They were there when you called, we used Zach's phone to call the police and Grace called Peter, you know I wasn't getting a signal in there, and I know they've been …" She pauses, and Kalinda wonders what they've been. Alicia shakes her head. "It's been a lot for them. Anyway. I hope it wasn't too much for you."

It was, a little. Kalinda's not really inclined to be touched at the moment; it took a lot of reminding herself that they were children to prevent her from jumping back. Kalinda shakes her head. She hadn't really noticed herself getting close to the Florrick children, those days in the hospital, though it's clear that it happened; she hadn't really noticed anything but Alicia.

The air thickens around them. Kalinda leans against the bathroom doorframe. She can't talk, so Alicia will have to.

"You're in the clear," Alicia continues, a little quieter. "Your story and mine matched up and all of that matched the ballistics and the—the documentation of your injuries, the medical reports, everything. Enough that they're not going to look into—your husband, they don't need to. We made it make sense." Kalinda looks at her. "They called Will last night, but I think you were asleep when he called you." Kalinda nods; it wouldn't surprise her, given how much she's been sleeping. "So I—wanted to come. I needed to see you."

Then an expression that Kalinda's seen too often comes over Alicia's face, as if she's looking inside herself, bracing for pain, tucking in all the loose ends. It frightens Kalinda; it's so often meant that she, too, is going to be hurt. "Alicia," she says, her voice horribly raspy.

Alicia looks at her. Tucking in the loose ends hasn't worked; she doesn't look ready, just raw and furious. She's staring right into Kalinda; tears rim her eyes, and her tone is cold. "You told me I didn't have to worry."

Kalinda bites her lip. Even that movement seems to be straining some small, sore muscle connected to her scar.

"You told me you'd be fine."

"I am fine," Kalinda says, though her voice belies it.

"You're not fine!" Alicia's voice catches. "You've been in the hospital for a week, you've been a suspect in your own, you almost—I thought I heard you die, Kalinda! There I was with my _children_, and I thought I was listening to someone _kill_ you! Do you have any idea what I—"

When Alicia moves towards her, Kalinda backs away, automatically, groping for the wall.

Alicia stops speaking.

Kalinda blinks when she realizes what she's done, sees hurt and need flash across Alicia's face. They look at each other, chests rising and falling rapidly.

Kalinda forces a little air into her lungs, forces herself still. She moves towards Alicia again, a tiny step, all she can manage.

Alicia reaches out and touches her scar. The skin around it is still a little raised, still a little hot, or maybe Kalinda's imagining it.

"Will said you had a tube in here?" Alicia says quietly.

"He hit my throat with the gun. I think you heard that. It wasn't—by the time I got here I was—suffocating. That's how they fix it, in an emergency." Kalinda has no idea if any of that was at all intelligible. It's also strange to be rambling when she can hardly speak.

Alicia nods, absorbing it. She brushes the back of her hand against the spot, follows the movement up and across Kalinda's hair. She cups Kalinda's cheek.

"I'm sorry," Kalinda murmurs.

"Oh—Kalinda, no. Please don't."

Alicia kisses her, awakening a need that Kalinda realizes she had almost, already, forgotten. Alicia kisses her throat, kisses around the scar in a manner both gentle and maddeningly arousing. She kisses Kalinda's clavicle; Kalinda puts her lips on any part of Alicia she can reach. For a second, it's all there is. Then Alicia stops and stares at her, looking for something.

"It's not your fault, Kalinda," Alicia says, softly. "I didn't want to say that. I just—need you to be safe."

"I won't be, Alicia," Kalinda says, feeling the words abrade her throat. She pulls back and looks at Alicia. "Not the way you mean."

"And what way do I mean?"

What does she mean? Kalinda just knows Alicia wants something she can't offer. When Kalinda cares for someone, all that follows is disaster. People endure horrible damage, terrible pain. But she doesn't know how to express that. She looks at Alicia, willing her to understand. But Alicia clearly doesn't. "I killed him," Kalinda says.

"You had to," says Alicia.

"I didn't. Not at first. I let it—I made it so I had to." Too many words; her throat hurts. "And even if—I won't—be safe for you. You can't protect me."

"I know that, Kalinda." Alicia almost sounds amused. "And you can't protect me. I'm asking you to protect yourself."

Kalinda's gaze shifts to the floor. She doesn't know what to say.

"And I know you did," Alicia says. "I just—I was so afraid." She takes a deep breath, one that seems to blow air around the room. "I need you, Kalinda. Can you understand that?"

"Yeah," Kalinda says, still looking at the linoleum. She makes herself lift her head, let Alicia see her eyes. "Yeah. I do."

Alicia waits.

"I need you too," Kalinda says, her voice still quiet and scratchy but tinged with exasperation; that much, really, should be obvious to Alicia by now. "But if I'm this dangerous to both of us—I can't—I can't see you hurt again. By me or—anyone else."

"You will," says Alicia. "We both will. It's what happens. Maybe not like this—" she gestures to both of their injuries, and releases a shaky laugh that Kalinda echoes "—but it happens."

"I've hurt you so much," Kalinda whispers.

"Yes," says Alicia. She shrugs her good shoulder, a little theatrically. "And you'll probably do it again. And I'll do it to you. And we'll see what happens."

Kalinda's throat hurts, so she doesn't answer; frankly, she's counting her lack of voice as good fortune at the moment.

"But, Kalinda. I can't." Alicia's voice is completely different now, almost as throaty as Kalinda's own. Tears are threatening to spill from her eyes, and her breath is getting lighter, little puffs of air. "When I heard that shot and then—Kalinda, I thought I was going to—going to lose you."

Then Kalinda is in her arms, Alicia's hands holding Kalinda's back as it quivers, there in the blank center of the hospital room. She's crying, sobs spilling onto Alicia's shoulder, and she may feel one or two tears falling onto her own hair. "No," is all Kalinda says, choking it quietly into Alicia's sweater. She's not sure Alicia can hear her, she can hardly hear herself, but Alicia holds her close, closer. Kalinda feels the tentative, renewed strength of the other woman's body surrounding her. Alicia holds her, and holds her, and holds her.

"We're okay," says Alicia, her soft voice skimming the tip of Kalinda's ear, the ragged strands of her hair. "We're okay."

Kalinda doesn't say anything, but after a second, she leans up and kisses Alicia with all the energy that remains in her body. The spark of it is forceful, delicious, starts to fill in the hollow spaces in Kalinda, the places that have emptied in the course of the last week, that the long drive with Bill, her own gun, the memory of Nick, have left in her. Nothing has been this lovely in so long. She slides her hand along the fine gray wool of Alicia's trousers, presses her hips to Alicia's, inhales the clean, crisp scent of her jaw. She ignores her tears as her hands explore the curves and turns of Alicia's body, her lips never leaving the other woman.

She doesn't want to be without Alicia either.

"Can I take you home now?" says Alicia when Kalinda's forehead rests against hers. She rests her arms, gently, around Kalinda's shoulders. "Please, can I take you home?"

Kalinda nods.


End file.
